The Visitors

Magpies. A whole family of them. I watch them from the kitchen window, they are playing, at the bottom of the garden, on and under the new 'steamer' chair that I had for my birthday, one hides underneath and one pecks from above, they seem to show great delight in the game.

At the same time another one has worked out how to get seed from the bird feeder -meant for the little birds which I have tried to encourage for the last year or so. The house is new, and the gardens all non existent when the owners here moved into their new homes over the last year or so. However at the bottom of the garden is a rugby field with many mature bushes and I can hear the little birds well, so I know they are there, so far only a few have ventured into the new garden that provides only a little shelter in bushes that are still not mature. Anyway the clever Magpie birds, though much too big for the feeder, have worked out how to climb onto the stem if the feeding structure and then push the feeder so that it spills a little of its contents (to be eaten later) and, at the same time, when the feeder swings towards them, they climb on board and can balance for an instant - just enough time to grab a seed or two as a prize. The are clever birds, a delight to watch, corvids with brilliant bird brains!

I have become fond of them and put out food for them most days. However they have no scruples! I looked out yesterday to find them, the whole family, shredding my bright orange nasturtium flowers. They were shrieking with delight in their scratchy voices and making a complete racket. Each piece of flower that they had shredded they carried in their beaks as they strutted confidently down to the patio to let go of it in the breeze. As the petal strip started to blow around they would each chase it in turn, like a dog with a ball, as it blew across the slabs. They were amused, they had made up a game, at my expense; though nothing much is flourishing in the garden in this unusually wet summer that we are having. Typical, I thought, I feed you all and this is how you repay me. That and waking me up at the crack of dawn calling to each other with their scratchy little voices and 'laughing' loudly in the new light of dawn.

I am considering putting something shiny outside for them to explore, perhaps it will divert them from their flower wrecking ways?!